Deborama's WWW temporarily down

Sorry, readers. I am having connection settings problems on my computer, and just borrowed DH's to say I will have to skip this week's WWW. Back next week, I hope.

Whole Foods - a supermarket, but not as we know it

Ahh, Whole Foods, I know ye of old. I have a love-hate relationship with them; they are the Walmart of the bohemian lifestyle. (Founder John Mackey says that unions are "like having herpes". Charming.)

Whole Foods is coming to Britain; well, at least to London, so we'll see if they make it here. As the article says, some people didn't think Starbucks would make it here - too un-British, too expensive. But then, ten years ago this country did not have skinny lattes, blues soundtracks and comfy armchairs in their cafes and now you can hardly hope to survive as a new coffee shop without them. (Yes, I know a cafe and coffee shop are not the same thing, but that's not the point is it? Ten years ago, if you wanted a coffee you went to a caff, or something worse.) So, will Whole Foods be a force for good - pressuring mega-retailers like Tesco to up their game and give the people what they never knew they wanted? Will grocery shopping cease to be the nightmare it still is in the UK? Or will WF be a force for evil - breaking the backs of grocery workers unions, driving up prices, co-opting local suppliers and simultaneously undercutting them with flown-in organic wares? Or will the brutal behemoth that is the British retail sector break WF and send it back to the US with its tail between its legs? Should be interesting.

Deborama's WWW Number 17 - Carey Carter dot com

In the interest of familial/filial fairness, and because it's the right thing to do, given the excellence of the site, the next Wednesday Website of the Week is another of my offspring hawking his art - at careycarter.com. Same thing as with Aimee's site, pretty much the whole thing is on my virtual wishlist. (Or buy it for yourself - he can always make more.)

Blair's Gotterdammerung

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian comment section has an article that brilliantly explains the weird sense of political doldrums that has had this country in its grip since Blair's announcement of an unspecified date for his departure from Number 10.

So this bizarre, unprecedented period is working fine for our current prime minister - but it is draining away the chances of the man, and the Labour government, who would succeed him. It would be nice to think that troubled Tony Blair. But I suspect he spoke the truth last Friday: he ain't bovvered.

Deborama's WWW Number 16- CafePress Aimee Danger store

I am being a little bit lazy this week with the WWW, in that I am showing a website that I am already very familiar with, as it is "owned" by my daughter. The featured website is one of the thousands of CafePress.com online stores selling T-shirts, posters, caps, tiles and other paraphernalia with graphics supplied by the seller and items manufactured by a mysterious "stuff" factory somewhere. CafePress is a great boon to any artist, graphic designer or fund-raiser but it can also be used for family reunions, community events or just plain vanity (get T-shirts that say "The world revolves around your name here", for instance.) The specific one is the Aimee Danger store, featuring the unique and haunting photographic imagery of Aimee Danger. If CafePress had a wish list, most of these items would be on mine.

Blogkeeping - a new blog is born

DH's eloquent challenge to the continued existence of the Trident missile system
Today, DH wrote a long and passionate e-mail to our MP about the forthcoming vote on renewing (or not) the Trident missile programme. He sent me a copy of it, and reader, I was blowed away. I had no idea he could write, or argue, like this. He said (also something of a surprise) that he would not object to my posting it on the blog. But I decided it was too good for the ephemeral glimmer of being a Deborama post. I decided he needed his own blog, even if that was the only post he ever did, and I had to set it up AND post it for him. So that is what I have done. I hereby introduce you to The Ramage Letters, a new blog, and here is a quote from "the letter":

I would deplore Conservative support for renewal of Trident in this coming week for the main reason that the decision does not have to be taken this week, this year or this parliament. At the very least, the decision should wait for the current and discredited Prime Minister to leave office, and ideally it would form part of a manifesto commitment in the next general election, thereby giving the British people the opportunity to have say in matters in which, as I say, parliament has a dreadfully meek and compliant record. A referendum would be the ideal solution, since I imagine the average MP to be at least as clueless about the real substantive issues as the average citizen.

Although my main objection to the vote is that it is needless at this time, before you – and other MPs – take a position I hope you have answered the following questions and are prepared to publish your answers after the vote:

At whom are we likely to launch these weapons? What state/quasi-state or geographic area? a) I assume that Europe (including Russia), the Americas, Japan, China and the antipodes are not and are never likely to be viable targets, either because they are always likely to remain allies or are simply too powerful for us to drop a nuclear weapon inside their borders. So that leaves territory in the wider Middle East, Africa or parts of Asia as viable targets for our nuclear weapons because they are too weak to hit back. Surely the world is sick and tired of having the American Bully strutting the globe: do we want really want to have a weapon we can only deploy against the weak and defenceless (when the Americans let us)? Shame on us if we do.

Update to WWW nbr 14 - Radio Wrap-up, NPR vs. BBC

Since I posted Deborama's WWW Number 14 - Radio Wrap-up, NPR vs. BBC I have had a bit of e-mail correspondence with a representative of the BBC, Nick Reynolds, who left a few comments on the post. In one of these comments, he alerted me to the fact that the BBC Radio homepage portal had been greatly re-designed. I am sure it's just a coincidence that it was due for a new release just after I posted that link to the old one, but I have had a look and it is greatly improved, in my opinion. For one thing, it is far less busy and "promotional" in its appearance, and more service-oriented, so if you happen to want to find something and the BBC radio site is your logical starting point, you now have a good chance of finding it, if it's there. So full marks to the BBC web design team for getting it right.
I also want to highlight a web page of the BBC's that I use a lot, which is the food page. I have a couple of issues with this page, even though I want to state at the outset that it is a great page and a valuable resource to me overall. The first issue I have is consistency. I have been a fan of British food/cookery programming since before I emigrated here, and I have used this website for years. Every so often, it gets a redesign. It has a feature, common to many food websites, called the Binder, where you can store your favourite recipes for quick reference. But when they redesign the website, you lose your binder and have to start again. Also, they don't archive all the old recipes consistently so sometimes if you save a link (to get around the disappearing binder problem), the link also may disappear. And another issue is that it is not very consistent about the availability online of a given recipe you have seen on a show, or even if a current link to a currently running show will be available or not. And my final issue is (and this is probably not the BBC's fault at all and beyond their control) that there are two other websites easily confused with this one - the BBC Good Food magazine site and the UK TV Food website. They are all quite good, all have recipe binders and all look alarmingly similar. So of course I now have to search the binders of all three, and then search the recipe databases of all three, to find a particular recipe that I know exists but can't quite remember where I saw it. Modern life is so complicated, eh? I used to only need to remember which cookbook I saw it in, and 99% of the time it was Joy of Cooking.

Deborama's WWW Number 15 - Creating Passionate Users

I can't say I like the title of this blog, but the content really is exciting. Pretty much every article has something to think about, or an idea to use, or at least something you can agree with - erm - passionately. So with a name like "Creating Passionate Users", what is this slickly designed, mostly well-written blog about anyway? To me, it seems to be about the psychology of technical design and documentation, especially documentation. The focus is on things like manuals, tools and presentations, and two articles I have chosen to showcase give you an idea of the scope and quality of the writing. The one that first caused me to whack this blog onto my bloglines feed was "Don't expect employees to be passionate about the company" by Kathy Sierra. This happened to pop up in answer to an unrelated search at the very time that I needed to read it to clarify some silent. gnawing fury with the management of my own workplace. The one I just read yesterday, by the same author, is titled "Too many companies are like bad marriages" and concerns the massive gap between the high bucks and emphasis on sales (the courtship phase) and the measly budgets and kludgy values of customer service (the post-honeymoon shock). And of course this article is written from the point of view of American companies - they should get a load of the typical British company, where crap customer service is not only a finely honed skill set but also a hallowed national institution. Other excellent articles include "Are our tools making us dumber?" and "Marketing should be education, education should be marketing". This blog is worth setting aside some reading time for.

Tragedy of the commons

Wikipedia: The tragedy of the commons is a class of social trap that involves a conflict over resources between individual interests and the common good. The term derives originally from a parable published by William Forster Lloyd in his 1833 book on population. It was then popularized and extended by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons". However, the theory itself is as old as Aristotle who said: "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it".

I have been accused by DH, who is very literate, fairly widely-read, and by no means ill-educated (although he is a university dropout, and he tends to zone out whenever a conversation takes a philosophical turn) of elitist language in using the phrase "tragedy of the commons" in my WWW article below. I would appreciate feedback on this, as I thought it was a fairly well-known concept but maybe I really do live in my own little ivory tower as my dear Mum always said. I have edited the article to place the possibly offending phrase in quotes.

Urgent active campaign - participate

On 23 February 2007, US and Iraqi forces raided the head offices of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW), the country's national trade union center. They arrested one of the union's security staff (later released unharmed), destroyed furniture, and confiscated a computer and fax machine. And then they did it again two days later, causing further damage to the union headquarters. The union is condemning the attacks as unprovoked. It is calling on the occupation forces to issue a written apology, to return all the seized property, and to pay compensation for damages caused. Please show your support clicking here and sending a message to support the union's demand for an apology.

Deborama's WWW Number 14 - Radio Wrap-up, NPR vs. BBC

So Deborama's WWW has featured two sites from NPR (National Public Radio). I thought I could find some good sites within the vast and lavishly funded BBC empire to give a bit of transatlantic balance, but you know what? I just couldn't. So the website of the week is the homepage for NPR. Compare and contrast with the radio homepage of the BBC. Do you see what I mean?
I don't know what it is about the BBC, but I feel a rant coming on. They have some wonderful shows on radio. DH and I are addicted to The News Quiz, The Now Show and Dead Ringers (which has sadly migrated to TV and pretty much never looked back.) DH loves and I can enjoy the priceless and matchless I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, the source of that wonderful game Mornington Crescent. I am not quite so taken by Just A Minute. But they also have a few features that cause us both to reach screaming for the dial, not the least of which is the Archers. While most people have a fond chuckle about the occult lingo of The Shipping Forecast, and recognise its vital importance to a minority community, the Thought for the Day comes in for rather more cruel yet well-deserved send-up, and the community that it is aimed at becomes ever more a minority each year. Other special-interest shows make no attempt to appeal to a wider audience; Gardener's Question Time springs immediately to mind.
The BBC does not play to their strengths. Perhaps it is part of the "tragedy of the commons", and the need to be all things to all people, when some of those people have regrettably low tastes and expectations. I think their website illustrates the problem very well. It hardly draws you in, does it? If you were not looking for something specific you would click away with a yawn, and if you were looking for something specific, well, good luck. The radio-player features, for podcast, listen-again, etc., are so infamously hard to negotiate that numerous third-party feed sites have sprung up to fill the gap. Their attempts at involving the public are laudable and sometimes innovative - such as the provision of a blog platform called backstage.bbc.co.uk, but since they are dealing with licence fee money here, it is all very over-designed and top-down. Like most outreach efforts in the UK, whether from the government or a quango or a charity, I just find it baffling and pointless. Some of the public-involvement schemes are just ridiculous, as if they were saying, hey, we don't have a British Rush Limbaugh, maybe the BBC can fill that gap! And some of them start out clever but then get beaten to death, like the thousands of Best of British contests.
So let me turn my attention to NPR. National Public Radio has spent the last 26 years of its almost 40 years of life struggling for survival, as its already meagre public funding fluctuated between a trickle and a locked-shut tap, depending on the ill-winds of Capitol Hill. It is the ultimate political football. You might almost say that the BBC has a duty of excellence, so that it will not be used as a morality lesson by the neo-cons about the pernicious influence of public money on the arts and the media. Despite all this, NPR's programming is almost all of an excellent calibre. It is open to the charge of elitism, but most people ignore that, because God knows, intellectual elites have few enough havens in the US as it is. One of the things I have always loved about NPR is its serendipity. This American Life, which I featured last week, is all about serendipity and good story-telling. I knew if I went to the site and clicked on something, I would strike gold and I did. I found this. Again, compare and contrast with the insipid "Thought for the Day" from the BBC. Why do they have to get it so wrong?
And what else has NPR got? Car Talk! (How I miss it.) Hearts of Space. And of course, All Things Considered, the best news programme anywhere ever. From Minnesota Public Radio, two of which have been syndicated by NPR, A Prairie Home Companion, St. Paul Sunday and The Morning Show (another one I miss terribly.) (I see from the MPR website that This American Life is coming to the Twin Cities.)
In addition to its excellent programming, NPR's use of the web really puts the BBC to shame, in all areas except perhaps news coverage, where I cannot fault the BBC at all. But where in the Beeb's vast empire is anything to match the simple but incredibly useful Books page, which I like so much I have added it as a feed on my Google homepage? No, I'm afraid I have to say that NPR wins hands down, delivering so much more with so much less to work with.

Not at all funny, but weird

Today a man was critically injured by a bull in Rugby town centre. The bull escaped from the cattle market in Rugby and after injuring the man, rampaged through the streets and at one point caused the train station to close down as it scattered passengers waiting on the platform. The injured man is still in critical condition with a head wound.

Blogkeeping

I have another post on Deborama's Book Reviews and Store, inspired by a Guardian article on the question of Britain's GLA (greatest living author).

Deborama's WWW Number 13 - NPR's This American Life

I tell you what, in this fast-paced multi-media plexiverse we inhabit, you have to move fast. I announced last week that I was going to start a run of radio-themed WWWs, and at the time, I was planning to save This American Life for a couple of weeks. But I went to the website, and darn me if it hasn't morphed itself into a TV show! It has not emerged for its close-up yet but is just a month and a bit away from a debut on American public television. I will definitely have to catch it when I am over there.
Oh, and by the way, I have to thank my son Carey for introducing me to TAL; he is a massive fan as evidenced by this old blog post. He says it might make you feel sad, but it made me weep and haunted me for days. Unfortunately, the link to the audio of the episode, "Other People's Mail" from 25 July 1997, does not work, but check out Carey's profile for a permanent link to TAL and you can find it in the archive. Or not. They're all good.)

Iraq in Fragments

I promised another blogger, who was involved somehow in the film documentary, Iraq in Fragments, that I would mention it on my blog; I made this promise months ago so I am a little late. But at the time it was not playing in the UK and now it is.

Deborama's WWW Number 12 - NPR's Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!

With number 12, Deborama's Wednesday Website of the Week is going to enter into a series of radio-themed website links. Since moving to the UK, I have listened to far more radio than at any time in my life. I came over here just before the explosion of digital radio and many new stations coming online so that is part of it. But another part is that DH loves Radio 4; in fact, it's one of the reasons he refuses to leave the country! And one of our favourite programmes on Radio 4 is the News Quiz. Well, apparently while I was away, NPR (almost the only network I used to listen to) has launched a similar American version, called "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!". I am sure it must be good because it has Paula Poundstone on the panel.

My life

So I went to see Cats, with my friends from a local Meetup.com group. There were five of us; we all loved it. I have had "Memory" going through my head all day. While I was out the ceiling fell in in the spare bedroom, ruining a few books and getting a whole bunch of books, clothes and other items damp and dirty. The house is a tip. Oh, well, c'est la vie.
So Haloscan has a wonderfully easy interface for adding your comments into your New Blogger (formerly known as Beta) format. It didn't entirely work, but I think that's my fault not theirs (and partly Blogger's) because I kept changing whether or not Blogger comments are allowed and/or shown, and Haloscan says that there is an incompatibility with Blogger comments and other third-party comments. So old comments show with the posts starting about 4 months ago and before; for the last 4 months, some have a link so you can add comments and some don't. However, there are old comments for some of those posts, which I can access on Haloscan's site, so they're still there, they just don't display on the posts. I think there may be a laborious manual way to get them back, but I am not promising I am ever going to do it.
Blogkeeping alert: I have actually put up a new post on Deborama's Book Reviews and Store! I am ashamed to say, I have not done that for well over a year. It's not a book review but at least it's a post.

Blogkeeping

So, have you noticed the change in Deborama? Yes, I have finally siezed the nettle and converted my blog template to the new Blogger "page layout" format. I did not like any of the Blogger-provided templates, though, but through a Google Group dedicated to sharing info on using the new Blogger I found a site selling very reasonably priced and attractive templates, so I bought one. (Link at the bottom of the page, as per T&C.) I used the same font and a roughly similar colour scheme to try to ease the transition, but I really like the ease of "adding widgets" and I especially like the three column format. So I'm pretty happy with it. Feedback would be appreciated. Oh, yeah, the Haloscan comments are absent, I hope only temporarily. As soon as I have time. . .
I'm off to see Cats in Nottingham now.

Deborama's WWW Number 11 - Landover Baptist Church

My Wednesday Website of the Week is a little late this week. But here it is nonetheless, the one and only Landover Baptist Church website. Hours of fun. As Swami Beyondananda says, it puts the "fun" in "fundamentalism".

Bird flu comes to the UK

It was always just a matter of time. I feel guilty. A former vegetarian, who even attempted to be vegan for three years, I have been making free-range poultry a big part of my diet in recent years. (The loud chattering of the budgies and cockatiels in the background doesn't help either. Yeah, I hear you, guys.) Bird flu has hit, hard, striking a turkey farm in Suffolk.

Blogkeeping

Check out the new look at Deborama's Kitchen or just the latest post there, on the economics of fine restaurants in small markets (it's more interesting than it sounds.)
I am still laboriously going through my old posts (I've got nearly four years of them) and titling and categorising and deleting dead links. When I finish this, I am changing to a new Blogger template and the archives will (hopefully) re-appear, along with a category index.

We've lost Molly

I am very sad to post the obituary of this wonderful woman, one of my greatest heroes in all the world. Molly Ivins, as remembered in The Nation. I seem to remember she was the one who coined the suitably contemptuous nickname "Shrub", and she was never so funny, or so impassioned, as when she was ripping a new one for some neocon, or consigning a wishy-washy Democrat to her own region of hell for failing to stand by principles. I was looking for some good quotes, and found this excellent article I will not support Hilary Clinton for president, and also the inimitable Cow Whisperers Against the War, both of which I urge you to read, because there ain't gonna be any more of this priceless stuff.

Deborama's WWW Number 10 - The God Interviews

This week's Wednesday Website of the Week is a small book, available in printed form or as a download, in which God is interviewed by a cartoon character named Augustine. The Interviews with God started as a comic strip feature on the highly graphic blog Blaugustine, owned by Natalie D'Arbeloff, an artist living in London. I have had the pleasure of meeting Natalie in person, and she is delightful, warm and wise, just the sort of person whose conversations with God you would like to be privy to.

Deborama's WWW Number 9 - Answerbag.com

Answerbag is a wiki or wiki-like site that often comes up if you do a lot of quirky searches (as I do.) It's free to sign up, and members can post a question on literally any topic in the world, not matter how serious or how frivolous. Other members then scan the questions and, if they know the answer, they answer it. I found Answerbag twice. The first time, I was frustrated by the total lack of leaf wipes in all the shops (having been supplanted by Christmas tat) and was looking for a home-made leaf-wipe formula. The second time I was looking for natural remedies to correct a home hair-colouring experiment gone slightly awry. (I can see you thinking Deborama is really too old for such silliness, and you would be right.) Like most participatory web experiences, Answerbag is growing luxuriously and sprouting widgets, gadgets and special interest groups.

How to calculate your carbon footprint

"When in doubt, ask a penguin."

The Jade that was ours

Exit Jade Goody, spirited away to a safe house, lest the disciples of British
tolerance tear her limb from limb.

So begins Mary Riddell's comment column in the Observer this past Sunday. As a so-called "race row" developed between a plain, loud, working-class (well, that's being generous, under-class in fact) young woman from Britain and a gorgeous, talented, wealthy and well-brought-up one from India, Britain spent the last seven days like this:

• Day one - glued to the telly, hoping for a hair-pulling girl on girl catfight


• Day two - realising that there was maybe some - um - racism at work here


• Day three - frantically disassociating themselves from such racism


• Day four - discovering that it wasn't that simple, there was a class dynamic as well; meanwhile busily pouring money into Channel 4's coffers to register their disgust/approval of Jade's bullying tactics


• Day five - as Jade is evicted, some found sympathy for her, while the tabloids ceased their orgy of asylum-seeker bashing to do some self-righteous racist bashing, without a second's pause to notice the irony


• Day six - Jade apologises, breaks down, apologises some more, weeps piteously (India for one is not entirely convinced) while the C4 executives cringe under the wrath of media critics and all and sundry proclaim (whew!) the death of the CBB and BB "format"


• Day seven - we put our feet up and have a nice cup of tea from the Paki shop
  

Passports, please

Starting today, passports are required of US citizens to enter or re-enter the country via Canada and Mexico. There is a short "cooling off" period before absolute enforcement, and passports are still not required for travel between the US proper and its possessions such as Guam and American Samoa. All part of the plan to combat turrorism.

My family, news from the home front

• My youngest sister, Denise, has been appointed Dean of Arts and Sciences


• My daughter Aimee has bought a house in Portland


• My son Carey has got a dream job: testing computer game software

Hillary RIP

We lost another budgie. One of our young ones who had a damaged wing, and then had also lost her entire tail behind the sofa in a mysterious accident, died under unseen circumstances following an adventurous leap from the cage. We generally let them get out and back in via a long rope ladder throughout most of the day, and with their wings clipped, they can fly short distances, but seem to prefer an exciting plummet from the roof of the cage to the ground, sometimes followed by a little exploration, before climbing back up. But we found little Hillary, who was the tiniest, loudest and cutest of the bunch, expired on the floor, so we don't know if she broke her neck or possibly died of fright due to the dog Desmond's interest in her. We buried her in the back garden near to Sanjay.
We are hoping to get three more, to build our flock back up, as they seem happiest when there are plenty of friends to play with. The cockatiels, Winston and Clementine according to DH (even we chose those names to be androgynous, i.e. Winnie and Clemmie) are doing fine. I am beginning to suspect, though, that Winston is the girl and Clementine should have remained Clement.

Art Buchwald, Columnist and Humourist

Art Buchwald died 18 January at the age of 81. I remember when his column was one of the first things I would read in the newspaper. I was a schoolgirl/young teen when he was at the height of his popularity, but he aged very well, because since his humour was absurd, sharp and never bitter or cruel, it never really went out of fashion. In fact, click on the link above, and then click on the link for the video feature, to see Art at his most sublime, with his self-made, one sentence, video obituary made especially for the web. Brilliant.

Deborama's WWW Number 8 - Tilefish

Tilefish is a UK-based highly specialised shopping site - for Scrabble enthusiasts. Countdown fans also patronise (great Countdown word, that) the site.

Iraq the 51st State (from March 2003)

A good satire and all true. This is from Mathew Engel's column in the Guardian. (NB: as I revisited this piece in my laborious conversion to the new Blogger, I reread the piece - it is chilling how what was satire in 2003 has come to pass - and is not that funny.)

Robert Anton Wilson - I don't see how to take death seriously

Robert Anton Wilson passed away yesterday, five days after posting these words on his blog (presumably with some assistance, as it says he was paralysed):

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.

R A Wilson was the main "founder" of a philosophy he called Discordianism, in his cult novel trilogy Illuminatus.

Deborama's WWW Number 7 - the Chimp-o-matic

Today's website of the week is available as a template add-on in Blogger, a flash add-on for your MySpace page or a "stuff" to add to your Google homepage. Chimp-o-matic is simply a very unflattering pic of GWB looking especially chimp-like, accompanied by one of his more boneheaded quotes, which changes daily. It has no redeeming social value whatsoever. And as its creator says, if you think GWB walks on water and heals the sick, this probably means that the terrorists have won.

Our newest birds

Here is a picture of the newest additions to our household. These are two young cockatiels named Winnie and Clemmie. Clemmie is the one in the foregound with the peachy cheeks; she is actually smaller but is standing in front. They join our budgies (but in a different cage for now, although they all get out a lot) : Pearl, Hughie, Holly and Hilary. And of course our little black (now black and grey) dog Desmond.
Winnie and Clemmie came to us as a freebie from my friend Cindy, who runs a parrot rescue centre (not actually restricted to parrots, she also has at least one pigeon!) and she hand-rears birds, does bird-counselling and bird-sitting and all kinds of stuff. She gave us the 'tiels supposedly because they were possibly becoming "feral" after their hand-rearing, so she didn't want to sell them, but really as you can see they are quite tame. We thought it might take a week before they would let us handle them but they were stepping up on our hands and perching on us on the second day.

US Peace delegation protests outside Guantanamo

Why is this not news? OK, so I'll stop being disingenuous. Why is this news being censored? OK, you're right, even that is a naive question. Why are none of the leftist blogs in the US or the UK covering this? Are they not aware? Is there some pernicious angle to the story not apparent to me that makes it OK that there's a virtual news blackout on it in the US and only low-key coverage in the UK? I heard a brief discussion on the BBC (Radio 4) but it was at just past 6 in the morning and not repeated. It's not in the Guardian; it's in only tiny, ultra-liberal US print media. A blog search turned up nothing. A Google News search found a few stories including the one above, but the only "major" papers carrying it were Canadian or Caribbean. What's the deal?

I hope it IS just me; on the 2007 opening of Congress

I had to turn off Nancy Pelosi and her glibly triumphal speech. I'm sorry, I am not a good Democrat, it is true. (I'm not really a Democrat at all; it's just that they're less evil than the other guys.) I mean, first of all, the Dems as a rule are so self-congratulatory it's nauseating. All they did was win one measly midterm, and that barely by a gnat's crotchet, and to listen to them you would think they had stood on an asteroid and hove the straying earth back into orbit. But the really sad thing to me is the utterly fallen state of oratory skills and public demeanor.
This is how I heard the honourable Ms. Pelosi's speech, once I blanked out the content for the above reasons and others: A laboriously, prissily delivered sound bite, then rapturous applause. A brief interval of silence, basking in the glow. A second laboriously, prissily delivered sound bite, more rapturous applause. A third sound bite, slightly more shrill, and the applause, having barely died down, swells again. A moment to all catch our breaths and savour our righteousness. A very laboriously delivered sound bite that thinks it's a rhetorical master-stroke, followed by delirious applause and a group orgasm.
I can remember a time when the whole speech was delivered in its entirety before anyone would consider whether it was good enough to merit a little polite applause or a respectful standing ovation. The sort of newspeak cliche-fests we now have would not have been considered worthy. From what little of the actual words that leaked through into my aggrieved brain, I think the new Majority Leader's text was mainly feminism and its long-overdue rewards. Now if she actually does anything to advance the cause of women in her new position, I may retract my disgust a little, but I am not holding my breath. Because there was also some very realpolitikal waffle about Iraq in there too.

Deborama's WWW Number 6 - Beg the Question? Get it right!

Just in time for Wednesday, I was listening to a great programme about words on the radio (Radio 4's Word of Mouth) and amongst some other wonderful stuff about words that have appeared over the horizon this year just past (2006 that is) there was a snippet about the website for a society that I have always dreamed might exist yet never knew it did all along. The group to which I refer is begthequestion.info and their purpose in existence is to get people to stop using the term "begs the question" in a completely incorrect manner. In case you are one of the majority of - oh - at a guess, 99.76% of English-speakers who do this, I will let the experts set you straight, because frankly I am sick of trying:

To beg the question does not mean "to raise the question." (e.g. "It begs
the question, why is he so dumb?") This is a common error of usage made by those
who mistake the word "question" in the phrase to refer to a literal question.
Sadly, the error has grown more and more common with time, such that
even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to
"BTQ Abuse."
While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are
content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be
denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label
should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly
distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous "modern" usage. This
is why we fight.

OK, you ask, in your fog of confusion, what does it mean then? (Because chances are very, very, very high that you have never in your life heard it used correctly, unless you have taken a university-level course in logic or have very well-educated and pedantic parents, or both.) I am not in total agreement with the definition the website (yes, even the passionate are not quite precise enough for me) but the one provided by Wikipedia is quite up to scratch:

Begging the question in logic, also known as circular reasoning and by the Latin name petitio principii, is an informal fallacy found in many attempts at logical arguments. An argument which begs the question is one in which a premise presupposes the conclusion in some way. Such an argument is valid in the sense in which logicians use that term, yet provides no reason at all to believe its conclusion.

I will give my favourite example. In an episode of The Good Life, Margo Leadbetter is asked by Barbara Good why she hates pigs so much. She looks at Barbara in dumfounded astonishment and says "Because they are pigs!"

Deborama's WWW Number 5 - Unfairpak

American readers of the blog will probably not be familiar with the Christmas hamper concept, unless they are even older than me and reside in the Northeast, perhaps. But the Christmas hamper has been the main vehicle of Christmas cheer for working class families in Great Britain since the early 20th century, and Farepak was one company leader in this field, a company which combined elements of direct sales, network marketing and modern finance with the old fashioned idea of "buying Christmas" a year ahead of time and paying for it in small zero-interest payments throughout the year. A charming picture until it all went horribly wrong in September of this year. This website, a real grass-roots effort by victims of the fund's collapse, tells the intricate but nauseatingly familiar story of big banks balancing their books on the backs of small consumers and workers.

Another budgie done gone

Sadly, I must report the sudden death of Sanjay, our prettiest budgie. Last night, after a normal day of playing and chirping and other birdy activities, he suddenly fell off his perch and just died. So now there are four. They seem OK, so it must have just been his time to go. To budgie heaven.

Blogkeeping - New Blogger

I have taken up the new Blogger format with the possibility of categorising posts and numerous other options. I have begun the process of re-templating my "lesser" blogs, Deborama's Book Reviews and Store, Deborama's Kitchen and Deborama's Fund of Knowledge. If you ever read these blogs, please take a moment to look at the format and give me feedback. I have not added back in all the little bits, the javascripts and the sidebar links, but I will if the format seem to be working out OK. I have another blog which I have made private, which is just personal photos and various trivia. If you want access to that, send me an e-mail and request it. (You will have to get a Google account, but you won't have to use it for anything else if you are one of those anti-Google fanatics. Personally, I kinda like Google and all their stuff.)

Deborama's WWW Number 4 - Subversive Cross-stitch

I am just barely under the wire here, and only if I count Alaska time and not GMT. Also, probably too late for Christmas gift shipping, but these might make a good New Year's present for the right kind of person: it's Subversive Cross-stitch. No need to explain what it is, it does exactly what it says on the tin, as the Brits would say. There is also a book.

New Orleans writers struggle to pen rebirth story

Tonight and tomorrow night BBC Four TV will be showing Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke. Earlier I posted about a spate of excellent books that came out over the year and a bit since Katrina. One that I didn't know about then but later discovered was by one of my great favourite authors from New Orleans, Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans Mon Amour (actually a collection of stories, poems and essays spanning the last 20 years, from and about NOLA.) I bought the book for my daughter, another doomed lover of the Big Easy, and I have heard that she liked it a lot. And now I found this story, one of many concerning how the various communities of New Orleans, the musicians, the artists, the political activists, have been struggling creatively but often painfully, to rebuild in the wake of the great deluge.

Look, I know this isn't consistent, but . . .

This just makes me sick. Ok, I wasn't at the trial and I should not judge someone by the expression on their face and I am not one of these uber-feminists who believes all men are rapists or even that most men are. And yes, I have thought that the astonishingly high numbers of people who claim to have been molested by a relative, usually a father or grandfather, is a little questionable. But dammit - look at his face. And look at his words: "I have no idea why my daughter hates me so much as to falsely accuse me of raping her." Well, that's damned suspicious. It would be more believable if you could come up with a plausible reason. Lots of girls are angry when their fathers leave their mothers and it usually doesn't escalate to an accusation of rape, then a formal charge, then a dramatic and messy suicide. How likely is it that a 17 year old girl genius would jump out of a hotel window to certain ugly death just to score a point against her innocent but hated father? I just don't think so.

Deborama's WWW Number 3 - Television Without Pity

My Wednesday Website of the Week for this week is Television Without Pity. This wacky website is couch-potato heaven, with the most in-depth, spoiler-ridden episode guides to current and past TV series you can hope to find. It includes the high-brow and the low, the silly and the sublime, although all the reviewers are rather silly. The episode synopses can run to 14 or more web pages and are often more entertaining than the show itself.

Ali Rap

A new book produced by graphic designer and long-time friend of Muhammad Ali, George Lois, Ali Rap, is a collection of "quotable moments" and iconic images of "The Greatest". Lois is also well-known for his infamous Esquire magazine cover of Ali as St. Sebastian (left). The history behind the picture is fascinating.

Deborama's WWW Number 2 - 6 degrees of Wikipedia

The second ever Deborama's WWW (Wednesday Website of the Week) is Six degrees of Wikipedia. In case the name is not self-explanatory enough, it works like this. You type the titles of two Wikipedia-articled people, places, things or concepts into the two search boxes provided and click on "go". It returns the number of links that separate them. I was astonished how short the links are. I tested it first with my ex-brother-in-law (the only near relative I was sure would be Wikiable) and HM the Queen (entered as Elizabeth II). There were only four degrees of separation; in fact, only three if I did not exclude day-and-date pages. (Try it and you will see why: Wikipedia cross-references all the dates it cites on grand index pages by year, month and day.)
Postscript: SInce just after I posted this, I have not been able to access this site; I keep getting a server-down message. Apologies to readers who tried it and couldn't access.

I have to have this book!

NPR's books previews website, from which I get a daily feed, today has a book called Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, which is a fond look at the lost art of diagramming sentences. An art that I deeply regret the loss of, by the way.

Enter Sandman

City Pages has a great article about and interview with Neil Gaiman. I love the headline : Why Neil Gaiman is about to become bigger than Death. If you're a Gaiman fan you will get that. But apparently our boy is not the nerdy comic book writer and story teller he once was (not that he was then, either, but he came off that way). There are a massive raft of movies coming out in the next few years that are either based on his novels or graphic novels or otherwise involve him in the production. One is a live-capture version of Beowulf and one is called Death and is based on the Sandman graphic novels. I am sort of a Neil Gaiman fan. I still have never read Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett and a few of his books I was not able to get into. On the other hand, I did love the Sandman series and also his novel American Gods.

The Freakonomics guy is blown away by Barack Obama

If Barack Obama is as good a politician as he is a writer, he will soon be President, says Steven D. Levitt of Freakonomics fame. The many pages of comments hash out the question of whether or not he (Obama) is in fact a good politician, and with the lively participation of conservatives, it's about even.